Miceala Shocklee's Blog, page 8

Poem: The Anger of a Lamppost

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Love’s a terrible thing

when you’ve been reduced to a scheduling item -

the emotional equivalent of a lamppost,

lovely and terribly convenient to have around,

but not exactly a high emotional investment.

Sometimes you don’t even notice

when the bulb’s gone out.

And then the stretch of putting it off and putting it off,

always meaning to attend to the deadness in your room,

but so much a second thought

that such a nonessential scheduling item

stays dead,

for months,

until finally you know you’ll neve...

I need to write a story.

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I need to write a story. I need to write a story where the characters don’t die, or wind up ground on the pavement in a bloody mass – literally or figuratively. I need to write a story where everything works out.

But I need to write a story that’s real.

I don’t know how to fit those last two sentences together.

My story has already seen its characters die, so many now that I’ve stopped ticking off the number of funerals I’ve attended and let the number stretch vaguely into oblivion. My sto...

Poem: At The Market

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At The Market

Today while at the market I heard
a most skeptical remarking word
about the tattoo behind my ear -
“Do you know it’s there, my dear?”

The asker proved an elderly man
and I so young at twenty-three
could only smile and reply
“yes,” most delightful and politely.

“You were drunk that night?”
the old man asked, and I just laughed if off.
“No, I planned this pawprint,” I smiled,
But still the man, he scoffed.

“You volunteered?” he said incredulously
so I smiled and laughed again.
“Yes, it’s a...

Flash Fiction: The Kindle Crime Syndicate

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I expressed envy at my friend’s recent acquisition of a Kindle Paperwhite. While I also am incredibly lucky enough to have a Kindle, it’s an older version with what’s basically a tablet screen, a.k.a. computer screen. So uh, ew. I mentioned that if I really want a Paperwhite, I should probably just social engineer a swap or work some kind of reduced payment scheme out. My friend, however, had other ideas…

“That,” he suggested, acknowledging my swap idea, “or become a master thief, steal...

Hard Conversations

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I have had so many hard conversations in my life. Conversations where I confessed, conversations where I demanded, conversations where I chided and begged and pleaded and cajoled and cried.

I have had so many hard conversations.

There was the conversation where I was told I could die. There was the conversation where I told the exact same thing. To my mother. To my friends. To my lovers. To strangers. Again, and again.

There was the conversation where I told him I loved him. No matter as t...

How Ke$ha Did Rehab Right

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I don’t really do celebrity junk magazines. But I do invest a fair amount of my glancing power in eating disorder recovery-related Facebook feeds. And recently, Ke$ha’s been showing up a lot.

I adore Ke$ha as an artist. Her songs are bold and crazy and unapologetic, just like Ke$ha herself. The singer has always put out a very “be yourself and take no prisoners” vibe – which is why I was rather surprised when it went public earlier this year that she was going to rehab for an eating diso...

Parents

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I don’t write normal parents. Not that I write parental figures with seven limbs, or serial killer tendencies. I just don’t write “traditional,” functional relationships between parental figures.

Yeah, hi there Freud. I see you smirking over there in a corner.

The more I’ve written, the more I’ve come to notice about my abnormal parent figures. The fathers, for example – most of the time, they just don’t exist. My earliest stories, written in the big, round handwriting of an eight or nine...

Poem: Death’s Regret

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Death’s Regret

I tire of this death,

I am weary of destruction.

I want nothing more

than to see the end of the day out.

I wish for nightfall

and yearn for explosion.

I ache for the cavernous

to hold me without doubt.

I cannot escape seconds

having none of my own,

and time is a cruel friend

as it only ever leaves me.

Constancy is frozen,

unchanged to the bone,

but I am infinite,

an in-understandable cruelty.

I give relief to the ones that are crying.

I take away the pain of your strife.

I am locked here, w...

A Lover’s Lament

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A Lover’s Lament, or“I Am Confused.”

I am confused, dear lover. I am confused how you could choose to throw me away like trash, while I am only just now beginning to slough off the skin of our life together like so many dead cells become love litter. The detritus of memories rots there on the floor, as every day I am forced to trample it underfoot as if it were nothing, and I were not worried in every moment that something will snag and I will trip. Too often, so often, I fall anyway. I...

The Crushing Inevitability of Cakes

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The Crushing Inevitability of Cakes*

There is a crumbiness to life,

a moist, dense sadness that dries out and falls apart

if you leave it alone on the counter for too long.

The icing crusting and rusting and rotting around the edges,

making you look at the slow decay of a sugary promise.

But then you laugh,

watching the calories subside into their own frivolity,

and you decide,

perhaps, I will have a piece anyway.

———

* No, I also have no fucking clue why I’m writing sad nihilist poems about cake....